"Drake," she said. "Poor li'l Drake. He'll need a new mommy now."
"I'm going to take care of it all, Fanny," I said. "Sure ya are," she said, suddenly turning bitter on me again. "Yer Heaven Leigh Stonewall, the Tatterton Toy Queen. Ya kin take care of everythin'."
"Fanny--"
"I'll see ya at the funeral, Heaven."
I was sitting with the dead receiver in my hand when Logan appeared in the doorway.
"If we hurry, we can catch the next plane out of Boston to Atlanta," he said. "I told Miles to bring up the car."
I ran up to our suite to get what I would need for the funeral. Logan did the same, and in less than twenty minutes we were back in the limo heading toward the airport in Boston.
How fragile, quick, and unpredictable life is, I thought. One moment we were all happy and silly, and the next we were in mourning, saddened and distraught. "Life is jist like the seasons, chile," Granny once told me. "It's got its springs and its summas and ya got ta cherish every moment of the spring when
it comes ta ya, cuz nothin' stays fresh and young and pretty foreva, chile, nothin'. The frost gets inta people, jist like it gets inta the ground."
The frost had gotten into me. I felt cold and empty--even now that I was filled with a new life! I shuddered, curled up against Logan, and slept most of the way to the airport and most of the way on the plane. By the time we arrived in Atlanta and got to Luke's house, it was dawn. Even so, Mrs. Cotton was waiting up for us.
She was a tall, stout woman with large, almost manly features. She looked like someone who had done hard manual labor most of her life, a woman aged beyond her years by her hardships. She had dull brown eyes and coarse, dark pink, full lips. She had an old coverlet draped around her shoulders when she came to the door.
"I'm Heaven Stonewall and this is my husband, Logan," I said. She nodded and stepped back. "We came as soon as we could. Mr. Casteel was my . . . my father," I said, thinking that was the easiest way to explain things.
"I know," she said. "Mr. Steine called to tell me all about you. There's a guest room you can use. It's right past the kitchen on the right."
"How's Drake?" I asked.
"He's asleep. Doesn't know nothin' yet," she said. "I didn't think it was necessary to wake him to tell him the ghastryews. He'd be too tired to
understand anyway."
"You did the right thing," I said. She didn't seem to need my approval though. She shrugged and started away.
"I gotta get some sleep myself," she said. "The boy gets up very early."
"Oh, look after him," I told her.
"Suit yourself."
"In fact," I said, liking her less and less, "you can leave as soon as you want tomorrow. Just let me know what Luke owes you and--"
"That's all been taken care of."
"Oh?"
"By Mr. Steine," she said. "I'll leave sometime in the afternoon. Got someone pickin' me up."
"Okay." She wasn't wasting any time, I thought. "Right past the kitchen," she said again and went off to her own quarters.
"Sweet soul," Logan said, shaking his head.
"Imagine that as a nanny," I said. Logan took our things to the guest room and I looked in on Drake. It had been years since I had seen him, but even when he was only a little more than one, I thought he was Luke's lookalike with his huge brown eyes framed by long black lashes.
I tiptoed to the side of the dark pine bed and looked at his tender little face. At a little more than five years of age, he had Luke's ebony-dark hair and deep bronze skin, skin that revealed Luke's Indian ancestry. I brushed a few strands of hair off his cheeks. He smacked his lips and moaned softly, but he didn't wake. My heart went out to him when I thought of the sorrow that had to be made clearly his tomorrow. To lose your mother and your father in one day had to be an overwhelming emotional blow, one from which you can never fully recuperate. I knew. For even though I'd never known my real mother, I'd always longed for her and missed her. And Pa, Pa, the only father I had known, had been a true father to little Drake. From tomorrow on, he would never be the same, but I was determined to use all my wealth and power to make his life as comfortable and as happy as would now be possible.
Logan and I managed to get a few hours of sleep before Drake wakened in the morning. I heard him moving about in the hallway and then I heard Mrs. Cotton making his breakfast. She hadn't told him we were here. I heard him ask, "Where's Mommy?"
"Your mommy's not here," she said. I put my robe on as quickly as I could. That woman was not whom I would want to break bad news to a child. "Where is she?" Drake inquired. "Sleeping?" "Oh, yes, she's sleeping. She's--"